Tramp Royale

by Robert A. Heinlein

  And finally, the land itself, what we saw of it, is grand and beautiful, worthy of love-and their birds and animals are simply wonderful!

  The Sydney Zoo is one of the best in the world. To reach it you cross the harbor in a busy little ferry boat which takes only passengers, no cars. I commented on this, since their proud bridge is relatively new, and was met with stares; it seems that the notion of automobile-carrying ferries is one which never reached Australia. Until the bridge was built it was taken for granted that a car could be used on one side or the other, but not on both. It is, possibly, a weakness in the Australian temperament that they are too prone to take shortcomings and inconveniences for granted. Their far-from-docile spirit is quick to resent the loss of an expected privilege, but annoyances they are used to they seem to regard as natural phenomena like the weather. Perhaps the government knew what it was doing in forbidding American magazines, as it might cause Australian housewives to be unwilling to put up with what they call "kitchens."

  From the ferry boat landing a tram runs up to the top of a high hill to the main gate of the zoo; you may then plan your tour downhill all the way, ending up at the ferry landing. The zoo is beautifully gardened and rich in specimens from all over the world, but our interest was in the Australian fauna not often seen elsewhere. There were lots of koalas but they could not be touched nor even seen from close up, which made us glad indeed that we had visited Lone Pine Sanctuary. We had the good luck to see a platypus. They are not easily seen even at the zoo, as they spend most of the daylight hours in their burrows. But we saw one come out and forage on the bottom of its tank for worms.

  A platypus in the flesh is even more unbelievable than one pictured in a book; he looks as if he had been assembled by a taxidermist with a warped sense of humor. Duckbilled, egg laying, fur bearing, and it suckles its young-it seems to have been created for the express purpose of giving nervous breakdowns to taxonomists.

  The platypussy does not seem to have good eyesight nor a keen sense of smell. The bottom of the tank was liberally carpeted with worms but the duckbill had a terrible time finding them. He went blundering along, missing nine by millimeters and gobbling greedily the tenth, while Ticky frantically coached him from the sidelines. The coaching had no effect, but she does not speak fluent Platypussian at best.

  Australian birds are as freewheeling as Australian animals. The emu, cassowary, and black swan, the bower bird, budgie, and kookaburra or "laughing jackass"-all of these are exotic enough for anyone. The whole continent has been a bird sanctuary, cut off from the rest of the planet and lacking natural enemies, for many eons-during which the feathered kingdom ran wild. Ticky and I loved them all but our favorites were the birds of paradise. Describing a bird of paradise is ordinarily about as useful as parsing a poem; the color plates of them in any good encyclopedia are much more rewarding. But I want to mention one fellow.

  We had been easing slowly past their cages, admiring their kaleidoscope patterns and colors, struck almost breathless by their flamboyant beauty, and reading the names of each-the Great Bird of Paradise, Crown Prince Rudolph's Bird of Paradise, the King of Saxony's Bird of Paradise. Then we came to a cage labeled simply: "The Magnificent Bird of Paradise."

  There was a little fellow in there no bigger than a robin, not brightly colored and not conspicuously plumed; we felt that there had been some mistake-no doubt he was just being kept in there temporarily and they had not bothered to change the sign, for he certainly was not "Magnificent" and it seemed unlikely that he was a bird of paradise at all.

  Then he caught sight of us, chirped excitedly, and hurried up to the front of the cage. There was a little perch there, about a foot in front of our noses; he settled on it, shook himself, and started to run through his act.

  He was magnificent. It had been precisely the right word for him. He was the most applause-hungry ham I have ever seen and his routine had everything but "Shuffle Off to Buffalo." First he threw his neck feathers up into a ruff which framed his head. He paused for us to admire him, then dropped it and puffed out all his feathers until he was four times normal size. He deflated and opened a zipper all the way down his belly. That is what it looked like-a zipper. The feathers moved aside in a straight line about a quarter of an inch wide and disclosed bright iridescent down underneath.

  He waited for the laugh with true Barrymore timing, then closed the zipper and opened his mouth. All the inside of his mouth was bright Paris green.

  He closed it, braced himself, and gave the climax of his act: he sang for us.

  It was unbelievably, hysterically bad. I can perch on a stick and sing better than that, and I have been chucked out of some very inferior quartets. But he was as cockily sure of himself as Mario Lanza. So we clapped and screamed bravos.

  He looked smug, took a bow and an encore, running through the whole routine again without variation. We applauded again and were about to move on reluctantly, when we learned that he had a special encore with which to wow 'em. He hopped into the air, turned a hundred and eighty degrees and landed with his back to us-whereupon he ran through exactly the same routine, including the rusty-iron song, with his back to the audience. This time we discovered that the lining of his ruff was bright yellow. I think he did not want us to miss it.

  He ran through his act twice with his back to us, finishing with that awful song, then flew away; the show was over and we could not entice him back. We crept away from there quietly, realizing that we had been in the presence of genius.

  The aquarium at the Sydney Zoo is one of the best and may possibly be the best in the world. In addition to all the usual small exhibits and many not usual it has sharks up to eight feet long in a pool large enough to hold them comfortably. In another immense pool they have a giant ray about fifteen feet square. They grow much larger than that, but this specimen is quite large enough to inspire terror and disgust. The aquarium has many octopi and we saw two large ones fighting. No, I really do mean fighting; in this breed lovemaking cannot be mistaken for fighting-the means by which octopi get little octopussies is even more preposterous than what fish do. Look it up sometime; you will be amazed.

  That zoo merits at least a week of careful study, but we had to hurry to catch the last ferry.

  We prowled downtown Sydney by ourselves, were driven all around Greater Sydney by Vol and Laura Molesworth, and were driven for hundreds of miles through the surrounding countryside by Brian Foley. Vol teaches at the University of Sydney; Brian is a partner in a literary agency. This was typical of the hospitality we enjoyed there. Although we knew no one in Australia when we left home, nevertheless I do not recall that we ever ate dinner alone in Sydney, except on the day of our arrival. Australians are not cold and stand-offish.

  The trips around town included ones to Botany Bay, symbol in song and story of the convict system. It is a wide, shallow unattractive bay which never was the site of a convict settlement; it was the destination of the 1788 First Fleet but the actual settlement was made six miles to the north in what is now Sydney. Botany Bay is now a place of yacht basins, boat yards, light industry, second-hand car lots, and suburban homes.

  The trips out into the country were an endless succession of prize vistas and musical aborigine place names, names like Yerranderie, Burragorang, Wollondilly, Woronora, Wollongong. North and south from Sydney are endless haughty cliffs and fine beaches; inland are hills and low mountains and canyons. We saw the famed tree ferns, living fossils of the carboniferous era.

  Despite the not-inconsiderable inconveniences, when the time came we were reluctant to leave. But Australia had one more magnificent piece of red tape to speed the parting guest. Attached to our ticket, when at last they deigned to issue it, was a notice that we must apply for an export license from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (equivalent to our Federal Reserve Bank) for any monies we wished to take out, whether in cash or in traveler's cheques. I had been aware of the limits placed on cash and had planned our spending accordingly, but the se
cond category was so worded as to include American traveler's cheques.

  Ticky suggested hiding our American Express cheques and ignoring the business. The notion suited me but I doubted the practicality of it; the officers at the docks would know that we must have funds of some sort; if we failed to show an export license, we would simply be in trouble. So I set about getting one.

  It did not seem to be too difficult, since there was a branch of the Commonwealth Bank right in the hotel. I went there. They examined my papers with interest, talked it over, and decided that there was nothing they could do for me. They suggested that I go to the main office of the bank.

  The breaks were with me; it was less than half an hour away. I went there, queued up at the foreign-exchange window, eventually was referred by the teller to one of the officers of the bank. He considered my problem and told me that I did not want to be in the bank proper at all, but should go to the eighth floor to the controller of trade & export licenses. To get there I should leave the bank, go around the corner, enter the office-building entrance, and find the lifts. I whistled to my dog team and mushed on; I was beginning to find the search fascinating.

  The office I was sent to was not quite the right one, but it was close; the side activity which actually dealt with such matters turned out to be on the same floor. By now the morning had passed (and our three o'clock sailing was coming apace); the man I wanted to see was out to lunch. No one else was permitted to stamp the form, naturally; these things have to be done properly.

  But the wait was hardly thirty minutes and the official was quite helpful when he did return. By now we had only some forty-seven checks left and it did not take very long to inventory them, list them by denomination and number, and fill out the rest of the blanks; in another half hour it was all done. The bank official was a bit dubious about the fact that some of the cheques were made out in my name and some of them in Ticky's name, but, since she was not present and our ship was sailing very shortly, he stretched a point and made out a license which mentioned both our names and issued it to me, granting me permission to remove from the sovereign Commonwealth of Australia bits of paper showing that I had paid dollars to the American Express Company back in Colorado, U.S.A.

  I hurried back to the Hotel Australia where Ticky was waiting in the lobby. She had been sitting there, watching our baggage and wondering what had happened to me, since we had had to vacate our room earlier in the day-in general, hotels in the Commonwealth do not follow the gracious custom of extending the courtesy, on request, of a later check-out to a guest who is not leaving town until after the regular check-out time, so she had stayed with our baggage in the belief that I would return in ten minutes or so.

  All it cost us was our lunch.

  XII

  The Dreary Utopia

  Our stateroom in the New Zealand steamship Monowai turned out to be even smaller than I suspected from the berthing diagram; if one of us inhaled it was a good idea for the other one to exhale. There was a single straight chair which had to be moved in front of the door to permit us to get at the wash basin, then moved back in front of the wash basin to permit us to go out the door.

  I went at once to the purser's office, having in mind that a shipping company will often hold a V.I.P. room right up until sailing and sail with it empty, provided no politician, lord of industry, or relative of the chairman of the board needs it. I planned to offer the purser a sackful of Yankee dollars and ask him to shift us to the V.I.P. room, if any.

  Either New Zealand lines do not follow this practice or the V.I.P. had claimed the room earlier; the purser assured me that there was no unoccupied stateroom of any sort in the ship. I was inclined to believe him, as the ship was as crowded as a department-store elevator on Dollar Day. Besides that, although the ship was in all respects luxurious in its fittings and furniture, everything about it was a little bit skimpy, like a wartime suit. The passageways were not quite wide enough for two people; when you encountered anyone it was necessary for one of you to stop and flatten against the bulkhead to avoid collision. I felt, the whole time we were in her, as if I were taking a shower in a stall too small to permit me to raise my elbows.

  I went back and told Ticky the situation. She had been trying to sort out what we needed and what we could do without from the ten suitcases, and she was hot and tired and dirty. She looked up, wiped dust across her face, and made a suggestion both unladylike and impossible. I reproved her. "Besides, you don't even know the purser."

  "I don't want to. Knowing his ship is enough."

  "He's really a very nice man. It isn't his fault. Come to think of it, it's your fault. If you weren't old-fashioned and a pantywaist besides, we'd be half way to New Zealand this minute, by air, and we'd be sleeping in a nice, big hotel room tonight, with a big bed and a big bathtub." She did not answer so I added, "Come on now, 'fess up. We're here because you wanted it this way."

  Ticky took refuge in the Nineteenth Amendment.

  I said, "You don't mean the Nineteenth, you mean the Fifth."

  "I know which one I mean! The Fifth is the one the communists are always hiding behind. I'm not going to hang around with them-so I use the Nineteenth."

  I looked it up later. She really did mean the Nineteenth.

  We had signed up for second table but shortly before dinner the chief steward came around to our little smokehouse. Captain's compliments and would we join him at his table?

  We looked at each other, astounded. I managed to say, "Tell him 'yes,' " and the steward left. Ticky said slowly, "I don't really want to sit at the Captain's table."

  "I know, and neither do I. But what else could I say? You can't refuse such an invitation, you simply can't. Not from a master in his own ship."

  "Oh, you did just exactly right. But I don't have to like it."

  "No, you don't have to like it. But you do have to be polite, or I'll keel-haul you myself."

  "You and eight sturdy seamen, maybe. Want to swap a little judo?" I refused with dignity. Ticky knows some awfully dirty holds.

  To our surprise, we enjoyed sitting at the Captain's table. Captain F. W. Young was both a taut shipmaster and a cultured, charming man of the world. The shortcomings of the Monowai were either inherent in her design or derived from company policy ashore; he himself ran a clean, disciplined ship. His other guests at his table were most pleasant people, too-Mr. and Mrs. Adman from Sydney, Mr. Field from Victoria. But we never did find out on what basis he had selected us. Ticky and I finally concluded that it was possible that we had been tapped simply because we were the only Americans aboard, which still left open the question of whether we were picked as curiosities or whether our country was being honored through us. We never asked-I suppose we were a little afraid that we might find out.

  As we became better acquainted with our table mates it was natural that they should see our stateroom and we should see theirs. Mr. Field had a large cabin outboard of ours, with portholes, a private bath and plenty of deck space; the Admans had an equally nice one forward, with a semi-private bath, shared with one other couple. We showed the dark, cramped Iron Maiden we lived in and told them our story. Had it been necessary for them to make reservations months ahead to get the accommodations they had?

  Not at all-in one case the reservation had been made two weeks ago, in the other case a little longer.

  I thought of our cash deposit made the previous year and I began to burn. At the earliest opportunity I braced the Captain himself about it, telling my story and then saying bluntly that I thought that the company had a fixed policy under which Americans were not given even treatment with Australians and New Zealanders.

  He smiled, did not comment, and changed the subject at once. I am not sure whether he knew of such a policy and did not care to admit it publicly, or whether he simply considered my remarks silly and wished to avoid unpleasantness. It is even possible that he was unaware of the truth either way; after all, captains do not sell tickets.

  But I rema
in convinced that Americans are discriminated against by this line. We had clear proof that they could have given us decent and comfortable accommodations at the time we put up our deposit, and I strongly suspect that they could have booked us out of New Zealand in one of their ships running to the United States if they had honestly followed the policy of first-come-first-served.

  New Zealand maintains travel commissioners in major American cities to try to persuade us to come to New Zealand and spend those dollars. Hmm . . .

  The four-day passage to New Zealand was without incident; it was merely uncomfortable. The Captain invited us up to the bridge to see the landfall and passage in through the heads into Auckland Harbor, but we could not see much as the weather was dirtying up rapidly; we were scooting in just ahead of a cyclone-a cyclone in these latitudes is the same as a hurricane; it is not the local twister of the Kansas plains. I was surprised to discover that the harbor was on the east coast of North Island, as a small-scale map makes it appear to be on the west coast.

  "It's not surprising," Captain Young told me. "All the world's best harbors face east."

  "So? How about San Francisco Bay? Or San Diego?"

  "You've named two. But take a look at your own east coast. Take a look at the map of the whole world. For every fairly good harbor on a west coast there are half a dozen excellent ones on the east."

  I thought it over and decided that he was largely correct, but I certainly had never realized it until he pointed it out.

  Entrance into New Zealand required more paperwork than did any other country, plus an unusually tedious process at customs. I had another minor crisis with Ticky, for New Zealand had thought up a brand-new piece of nonsense: every visitor must sign a statement and swear a formal oath before an immigration officer not to do anything harmful to the Queen.